by Caleb James
“This is now in the past. It cannot be undone.” He took to the air.
He knew it was a temporizing measure. She may be broken, but she will find me. Do I stay or do I go? He searched for the source of the horrible noise, like a hound out of hell.
What his eyes landed on forced his hand. For in the alley next to his tower, the ogres that had escorted the wing-shackled Seamus and Luluba from his chamber were high on dust and had backed the two sprites against a wall. Their intent was clear. They had the munchies, and his two brilliant pupils were nothing more to them than a savory blue-and-green snack.
With sword outstretched, he flew toward them.
He alit in a concealed alcove behind the lumbering trio, two who had begun the day as members of his security force. Their uniforms were in tatters, and the chomping of their jaws added a grinding percussion to the wail that grew even louder. The third was another freed sociopath. This one—Snark—had the gluttonous eating disorder, BED. He had been incarcerated after wiping out entire colonies of brownies.
One against three he knew was hopeless. But the determination on Luluba’s face and Seamus’s wide-eyed panic gave him no choice. He heard his own words rattle in his head: “Sometimes, in the face of death, we either fight or bow down to the will of tyrants. The price of freedom is not free.”
The murderous inmate who had gorged repeatedly on defenseless brownies swung his ax and sang in a deep baritone. The words were barely audible over the siren’s roar. “Chop you into bits and nibble on your bones. Grind you into paste and spread you on my scones.”
The hell you will! Redmond gripped his sword, swung out of his hidey-hole, and shouted at the ogre, “Hey, fatso, the last thing you need is scones!”
The ogre roared and turned. “Don’t call me fat!”
Redmond widened his stance as recognition lit in the ogre’s dust-glazed eyes.
“I know you,” he roared. His two compatriots stood by his side, their focus split between their quavering snack at the alley’s dead end and their ex-boss wielding a sword. “You locked me up. You made me hungry.”
“He’s puny,” one remarked.
Their escaped leader cocked his head. “He’s got more meat than they.”
“That’s for sure,” Redmond said. He ripped the top of his robe open and ran a hand across his chest. “Much more meat.” He hazarded the briefest glance at Luluba, who unlike the frozen Seamus could act in a crisis. “And you’re hungry, Snark. Always so hungry. It’s never enough.” He nuanced his voice, but with the chaos and the alien roar, his magic barely carried the few yards that separated them.
“Hungry, so hungry,” the ogre replied, and he advanced on Redmond, who matched his each step forward with two steps back. His goal was to draw the three of them from the alley mouth and give Luluba and Seamus a chance to escape. His mind skittered over possibilities as he tugged with his words at the three dusted ogres. In quieter times, he’d used Snark’s fascinating case to teach his students about esoteric eating disorders. “It’s the hunger,” he’d instruct. “Food for them has become nearly as strong a narcotic as dust. Tragic if you think about it. Because it’s possible, though not easy, to become free from a dust addiction. But one has to eat, and so abstinence from the substance of your addiction is never possible.” The other two were pure followers. They’d attached to Snark as they had to his head of security, Gark. He must be dead.
With sword in hand, he continued his backward walk. His senses drank in fresh dangers: the crash of broken glass from homes and businesses being looted, the screams of those who had not been able to flee as they defended their families. Luluba and Seamus know of the tunnels. Just a bit more and they can flee.
“I’m hungry,” Snark whined.
Before Redmond could toss back a scrap of soothing magic, the eight-foot ogre squatted on his powerful thighs and sprang into the air. He landed a yard from Redmond, who reflexively raised his sword.
Snark spun his ax in easy loops as saliva dribbled from the corners of his fleshy lips. “Hungry.”
Redmond tracked the rhythm of the ax. He darted to the side, which brought him within arm’s reach of another ogre. He slashed up and cut deep into the howling beast’s forearm just as the third ogre jumped overhead and landed at his back, cutting off his escape.
But as he did, Luluba grabbed a piece of wood, and with Seamus at her back, she headed toward him.
“No,” Redmond shouted. “Run!”
“No,” Luluba yelled back as she headed toward Snark with the intent of beaning him with the board. With her bound wings and shackled feet, her movements were slow and awkward.
“Run,” Redmond cried as he tried to spin free from the tightening trio of ogres, one who howled in pain, and Snark, who was in the throes of his hunger lust.
Luluba gritted her teeth and slammed the board down on Snark’s head. He threw back his arm and sent her flying into a heap against a wall.
She got back up, but now Seamus grabbed the same board and swung it with all he had at the back of Snark’s legs.
The ogre’s knees barely shook as his ax picked up speed and he stared at Redmond.
Just as Snark revved into the final rotation, a drop of rain fell in his right eye. He blinked, and his arm faltered.
Redmond caught the glitter of something falling from the cloudless sky as he seized the opening and pivoted. The ax whistled by his side and slammed to the ground.
Snark grunted. His comrades closed in for the kill.
Redmond felt a faint breeze and used it to sweep through an opening between his attackers. It gained him a good thirty feet, and if he’d chosen to run, he could have. He glared at Luluba and Seamus, now both armed with boards. He knew their behavior was due to his teachings. It gave him no comfort. But if they die, it is with free will. And so we fight. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of ogre psychopathology—If I can take out the alpha, the two followers will be left adrift—he taunted Snark. “In the daylight, I can see how fat you really are. Though fat doesn’t cover it. You’re beyond obese.” He remembered sessions with Snark, where the origins of his disorder were laid bare from a childhood filled with deprivation, parental neglect, and frequent bullying. “Your poor mother. I can see why she abandoned you.” And while it went against all his professional ethics, Redmond retrieved the most painful memory that Snark had divulged in a tear-filled session. “She burned all of your toys before she left. She held Jang Jang, your favorite cuddle creature, the one you’d cry into every night, she held it over the fire, and she dropped it in.” He modulated his voice to that of a female ogre’s. “No one will love you. No one will ever love you.”
Redmond’s words had their desired effect.
Snark roared. He lowered his head and, in a blind rage, closed the yards that separated them.
Redmond kept his sword down and his eyes and ears focused on Snark’s charge as raindrops tickled his cheek. The ground trembled. He quieted his thoughts, slowed his breath, and kept his grip loose.
With barely two yards between them, Redmond feinted to the right. Snark had too much forward momentum and couldn’t make the correction. He turned his head as Redmond brought down the sword and sliced it clean off.
Blood spurted high into the air.
Luluba and Seamus looked from him to the decapitated Snark and his twitching torso to the remaining ogres.
While Redmond’s earlier assessment of them being followers was accurate, what he had not calculated was dust munchies.
“More for me,” one muttered as he turned and advanced on Seamus.
The other looked at Redmond with his bloodied sword. “That one’s too much trouble. I call green.”
“I got blue.”
But before either could make good on their threats, a female voice cut through the incessant noise. “There you are, you tiresome little man.”
All heads turned and beheld Queen May, resplendent in a bloodred gown astride the back of the great white salamander.
Thirty-Eight
FOR THE second time that day, Finn watched the puka pull, and then, through the rear camera, push Engine Twenty-Five onto dry land. With lights and sirens twirling and wailing, they made land twenty yards back from where May and her hordes had breached the Center. Bloodied bodies and broken fey were everywhere.
“It is war,” Liam said, his words drowned in the siren’s roar.
“This better work,” Finn replied as he and Charlie hustled to unroll two hoses. Without words, they stuck them both into the moat and sucked in three thousand gallons of water to mix with pure gold, fairy dust, and hound hair.
“Tell us what to do,” Alex said as they watched and waited.
“Two teams,” Finn instructed. “Charlie’s going to turn these on full and hard. Alex, you take the head of one, and I’ll get the other. Jerod, Marilyn, Adam, you’re with him.” He smiled. “Gran, get behind me, Alice, Liam, you too. Charlie, tell us when.”
“Aim high,” Charlie added, his fingers poised to flip the switches. Finn widened his stance. “Brace yourselves.”
The others followed his lead as Charlie turned on the flow and cranked it to full. The thick hoses filled and pulsed to life.
“High,” Finn yelled above the siren as pressurized and reconstituted wolfhound pee shot up and out.
At their side, the puka stomped the ground. It caused two waterspouts to form on the moat’s surface. They danced and twisted and jumped from the broad lake and attached like dervishes to the liquid being shot from the hoses.
“Holy crap!” Charlie shouted as he grabbed a section of hose behind Alice and tried to steady it. He yelled to Alex, “Hold tight.”
“I’m trying.”
“Keep your weight low,” Finn instructed. “Dig in with your legs and feet.”
“Got it.”
With hearts pounding, they watched the golden storm engulf the Center. Time stretched, and what seemed like hours took less than fifteen minutes to drain the truck.
The puka’s water cyclones shrank and then died away as they lost fuel. The hoses flattened, and deafened by the siren, the band of travelers stood frozen.
Finn moved first. He laid down his hose, and not taking his gaze off the crumbled wall, he climbed into the engine’s cabin and flicked off the siren and then the lights.
The silence echoed as they stared into the breached citadel.
Finn hopped down from the truck. The puka snorted, and almost as one they bounded toward the boulders of the destroyed wall.
“I’ve got to find Redmond,” he shouted. His words fell away, along with his clothes and his human form. He sniffed the air. His broad shaved head darted back and forth, desperate to find the scent of his love. He snarled as they passed creatures wakening from dust lust with eyes filled with bewilderment.
Ogres with blood-covered swords and axes dropped their weapons as shameful memories of what they’d done intruded.
The reek of blood and death made it difficult for Finn to focus.
The puka too seemed out of her element, or so he thought as she leapt into the badly damaged fountain in the central square. She snorted in the Hound’s direction and pawed at the shallow waters.
He followed her lead and leapt into the body-strewn pond, where sparkly sharp-toothed fish feasted on their unexpected banquet.
The puka lowered her head, and the Hound hopped upon her back. He was not graceful and did not care as he slunk low and held fast.
The water swirled beneath the puka’s hooves. It picked up speed as it spun ever faster, and like an elevator, a water cyclone grew and carried hound and horse high into the sky.
And he caught the scent. Redmond. He smelled his love’s fear and courage, but all that mattered, as the Hound grinned and his tongue lolled, was that Redmond. He howled and barked with joy. He’s alive!
Thirty-Nine
THROUGH THE oscillating wail of the alien noise, May sensed threat as she raced on the back of her salamander self down the circular stairs. She was furious and frightened and determined to hunt down and eat her fleeing doctor. In truth, he had brought her clarity. It helped and it didn’t. I have lost so much. Even this and even now, assessing her current divided state and the fact that somewhere in all of this travel between realms she had been robbed of the most basic ability to fly. One more thing for which they will pay.
Her salamander self was less reflective. She lapped the air with her tongue. The taste of the doctor was clear and near. She bounded sure-footedly down the hundreds of stairs with her other self queen-like upon her back.
They hit the ground and, without stopping, charged through the door.
Something is wrong, May thought, unable to appreciate the chaos and bloodshed that was all around. Red, green, blue, and lavender blood spattered against the Center’s glittering white cobbled streets and marble walls brought her no joy. Even her hunger, while never slaked, was more of a dull pit. Something is wrong. And what makes that scream? Having glimpsed the red metal beast from the balcony where her doctor had taken flight, she realized It is obviously from the See. But how did it come to be here?
Her salamander self, driven by scent, turned into one of the Center’s once-tidy tree-filled squares.
“There you are. You tiresome little man.” Her words rang false in her ears as she stared at her handsome doctor, with a bloodied sword in his hand and an ogre’s head and twitching body before him. His pair of wing-bound pixies and dusted ogre guards completed the tableau.
Her entrance surprised them, but then something warm and wet landed on her cheek. She gazed up as a powerful wind whipped through her hair. The salamander’s tongue caught the strange liquid. It squealed and bucked as the rain came down.
May held tight to her other self, but a sick malaise blossomed in her gut, and her gown grew heavy and wet, the threat she’d sensed earlier blossoming into panic.
The salamander screamed as the water hissed on its now slick skin. Flames sparked as rivulets of gold tore at the creature’s hide.
One of the ogres shouted, “Doctor. She’s behind you. Run!”
“Traitor!” May gasped. “You will die!” she screamed as the salamander writhed and shrank. Her feet touched the ground, and she felt for the magic that would unhinge her jaw. It would not come. There was nothing.
The air filled with the crackle and pop of flames that seemed to devour her salamander, which shrank, now the size of a large pig. She stared. What is happening? Where is my power? Where is my special?
Searing pain tore through her gut. She stared across at her doctor, half expecting to find he’d planted his sword in her belly. But no, her hand covered her middle. Not again. She searched for her salamander, now the size of a rat. It circled her ankles and attempted to spit fairy fire. Not even a wisp of smoke came from its tiny mouth.
To Redmond, the warp and weave of time had expanded. Where every day he wasted seconds, minutes, and hours, this one sword-gripping moment was a universe to itself. He stared at May, felt the vulnerability of his back and the two ogres who had seconds earlier wanted to kill him and eat his students, and prepared for battle with a creature whom he suspected was immortal.
“I will not live in a world of your making,” he shouted through the rain.
May’s hair tumbled and covered her face as her salamander self, now the size of a mole, ran frantic circles around her legs.
Behind him, one of the ogres cleared his throat. “Doctor, tell us what to do.”
That’s a good thing, he thought. As ogres were not subtle. What came out of their mouth was bankable. “Stay at my back till I tell you otherwise. One of you unshackle the sprites.”
“Yes, Doctor,” they replied in unison.
“Luluba and Seamus, you are both to flee the Center and find safety.”
They too answered as one. “No.”
Luluba continued, “This is o
ur fight as much as yours. This is our world.”
To which Seamus blurted out, “And I love you, Luluba. If we have to die, I need you to know that.”
In the midst of all, there was a heavy pause. And then Luluba spoke, “I love you, Seamus.”
Redmond made the connection as May threw back her head and searched the sky for the tempest’s source.
“You will all die!” she shrieked.
“Not today.” He remembered how Finn had pissed on his dust bunnies and how just his presence had freed him from the drug’s enslavement. How the hell did you do this? Despite all, it was impossible not to smile. He’s pissing on all of us.
“How dare you! I am May, queen of the Fey,” she screamed. Her gown was soaked and was an unstable hodgepodge of chintz and tutti-frutti spangles.
He realized that the Hound’s pee had robbed her of most, possibly all, of her power. But he would not risk another life. With sword drawn, he advanced on May.
“Doctor, stop. I am your queen.”
“Take her to the cells,” he ordered the ogres. “We have work to do.”
He clenched the sword’s hilt. Having just separated Snark’s head from his body, he knew he could do it again.
“You wouldn’t,” she shrieked as she backed away, her escape thwarted by a clear-eyed ogre.
A tiny movement caught Redmond’s eye. He looked down, and without thought, he stomped his booted foot onto the tiny salamander version of May. Its blood squished ichor green.
“No! It is forbidden!” she shrieked and fell to the ground.
He halted, half expecting a bolt of lightning to strike or a sinkhole to swallow him. For yes, a physical assault on royalty was treason.
May sobbed, her gaze riveted to the squished portion of her own flesh. Luluba and Seamus, their wings and feet unbound, flitted to his side.
“No.” May crumpled to her knees. “You can’t have done this.”
“And I did,” he said as the weight of his action pushed back the rage. “This is the end. For now you are irrevocably and truly broken. You will never rule.”